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Keywords: Kabul

  • RELIGION

    Do we ban the nun's veil next?

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 24 August 2017
    29 Comments

    For an item of clothing that virtually no Australian Muslims wear, the burqa sure gets plenty of airtime. I've never seen the (usually blue) all-enveloping cloak with the small material grill for sale in any of the bricks-and-mortar Islamic clothing stores I've visited. Short of travelling to Afghanistan, the only place I can think where an anti-Islam protester might get one is by searching Halloween costume listings on eBay or Etsy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A cautious response to mass killings and police violence

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 July 2016
    5 Comments

    When confronted by violent killings we should be appalled, identify sympathetically with the victims and with those affected indirectly by these tragedies, and also take a respectful interest in the complex lives of the perpetrators and the relationships that contributed to the shootings. The pause before making larger judgments respects the complexity of motivation and of social interactions involved in the killings, and offers a base for reflecting on how we may lessen the possibility of them happening in future.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Helen Garner's 'Best Essays' triumph

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 13 February 2015

    The Best Australian Essays 2014 finely illustrates the unnervingly unclear line between essay and short story, but no-one plays with form quite like the indomitable Helen Garner. She offers such a brooding, aching ode to her mother. Proof again that good writing is an inexorable, spiritual exercise that seers itself into the reader's memory. How does she do it?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kabul love story

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 October 2014
    1 Comment

    Orphan Abdul loves Fatemeh, but her father is demanding a prohibitive dowry for her hand. The financial wrangling between Abdul's guardian Mahboba and Fatemah's father Nik, and all this implies about the ways in which young women's futures can be sold and traded as part of an archaic cultural norm, seems crass and is more than a little disturbing to witness.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Bats not boats for Afghanistan

    • Anthony
    • 10 September 2013
    17 Comments

    The United States, a country of cricket illiteracy, spent more than $1 million constructing the Kabul Cricket Stadium, recognising the major impact cricket is having in the country. Australia, one of cricket's 'first nations', has done nothing. It is tragic that, for ordinary Afghans, the vast majority of whom have never considered seeking asylum, Australia's most visible contribution to their country is the message to 'keep away'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Asylum seeker sonnet

    • Brendan Doyle, Ben Walter and Rob Wallis
    • 28 May 2013
    5 Comments

    With every boat that sinks our grief's untold; the smugglers just don't care they're overfull; So join the queue, no need to bribe with gold; and get a proper visa in Kabul.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Party games in darkening Canberra

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 22 March 2013
    10 Comments

    Our political leaders are suffering from the disenchantment of the electorate. Canberra and its political hackery has less appeal now than it's had for a long time. It might be worth listening to Bob Hawke, who recently unwittingly echoed the seniment of French philosopher Simone Weil's essay 'On the Abolition of All Political Parties'.

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  • RELIGION

    Seeking a more ethical way to stop the boats and deaths at sea

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 September 2012
    4 Comments

    In the lead up to the election, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison are sure to continue insisting that the Gillard Government's Pacific Solution Mark II will not work. In all probability this will undermine the efficacy of the Gillard Solution in stopping the boats. Read the full text of Fr Frank Brennan's address to the Migration Institute of Australia, Menzies Hotel, Sydney, 14 September 2012 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    SBS goes celebrities over substance on asylum seekers

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 August 2012
    18 Comments

    They stop short of calling it Go Back to Where You Came From: Celebrity Edition, but it's hard to escape the view that SBS is going out of its way to top the ratings success of the original series. There's not much insight to be gained from watching Catherine Deveny and Peter Reith snipe at each other, fun as it may be.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Afghan terror past and present

    • Jan Forrester
    • 05 December 2011
    8 Comments

    In Afghanistan, the past isn't the past yet. The last 150 years bear directly on its present perilous state. Now that the US is leaving, some US lobbyists and Afghan women wonder what will happen if the Taliban return. 

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Australia racist? Well, der!

    • Bill Collopy
    • 25 August 2010
    11 Comments

    X people work hard. Y people are natural athletes. Z people treat the world like they own it. Q people are violent. R people are drunkards. S people mistreat women. V people are queue jumpers. Racial generalising becomes racist only if we accept its false premise.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    I am every asylum seeker

    • Greg Foyster
    • 21 July 2010
    42 Comments

    I am not here to get rich, to receive charity, steal your job, or cheat the system. I am not a 'queue jumper'. I am not an 'illegal arrival'. I am not a 'political issue'. I am an asylum seeker, and this is my story.

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